As part of my social media for social marketing series I’m highlighting a diverse range of examples that exemplify this approach in very creative ways.
Last time, I looked at the #LikeAGirl campaign, and now I’ll briefly highlight the impact of the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC’s) Facebook Logo campaign.
In 2013, HRC catalyzed a movement supporting marriage equality, helping overturn Proposition 8 in California and the Defense of Marriage Act. HRC modified its logo by changing its colours to red and pink (see featured photo)—colours frequently associated with romance and love.
On March 25, 2013, the day before the Supreme Court was scheduled to start deliberations on Proposition 8, HRC posted on Facebook encouraging users to adopt the modified logo as their profile picture. The message was shared over 125,000 times. The logo and variants spread through the network, through millions of everyday users and social media influencers such as Beyoncé, George Takei, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen DeGeneres and Martha Stewart. A large number of supporters created their own remixes of the HRC logo, which was a testament to the ability of the campaign to engage and inspire.
The campaign drove over 700,000 unique visitors to HRC’s website in just 24 hours. More than 100,000 of them signed and shared HRC’s ‘Majority Opinion’ petition, recruiting more than 67,000 new supporters. Government leaders and corporations showed their support through Facebook posts and images. Not only did the campaign help overturn Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act, it also helped make same-sex marriage become much more socially acceptable to support and advocate for. And the campaign itself won multiple awards to boot.
